


Narcissique

by canterville



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Incestual Vibes, Implied Balem/Titus right at the end, Male Solo, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 12:28:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3447200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canterville/pseuds/canterville
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The man staring back at him is almost a stranger. Where there had been harsh lines, there was only smoothness. He rakes his fingers through his hair, dark, where he can still remember starlit silver. How many times has he watched this face change, seen it made new?" Fill for this <a href="http://jakink.dreamwidth.org/724.html?thread=31700#cmt31700">prompt</a>. Balem is extremely taken with his newly rejuvenated body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Narcissique

There is nothing like the moment one first emerges from a pool of RegenX-E. The liminal space between surface and depths stretches and snaps; the tension between them negligible. Balem wonders if this is how a snake feels when it sheds its skin. The dull ache of encroaching age is a distant memory, one that he is eager to slough off. He basks awhile, gazing out at the countless stars. He is old enough by now that he knows most of them by name, knows the planets that whirl around them in an endless dance. For every star that dies, every world that is consumed, another is born. Balem blinks nectar out of his eyes, lets it moisten his lips. While pleasure is something he sees the merits of, he has never counted idleness among such things. He does not linger long in the pool, now that it has restored him, wading effortlessly to the edge, and out.  
  
The nectar dries out quickly, but vagrant droplets tickle here and there, his skin hypersensitive, still, from the bath. The silk robe he pulls on is softer than the day he bought it, so sumptuous he has to pause and revel in how it envelops him. He had allowed himself to age just long enough to forget the urge to consume that comes with younger flesh. Sensation is an intoxicant, and it is all he can manage to retreat to the austere privacy of his quarters. The sound of the door sliding shut is almost enough to make him flinch; impossibly loud, to his renewed senses. Long ago, when his voice was fair, his throat unmutilated, he would sing to himself after bathing, to hear it more clearly than it seemed he ever had. The time for music has gone, however, and so, too, Seraphi, whose voice would have been the grandest music of all, just then.  
  
Assured that none would disturb him, Balem lets his robe slide off his shoulders, ghosting along his back. It’s almost enough that he shudders. He _does_ shudder when he catches sight of himself in the long, hovering mirror. The man staring back at him is almost a stranger. Where there had been harsh lines, there was only smoothness. He rakes his fingers through his hair, dark, where he can still remember starlit silver. How many times has he watched this face change, seen it made new? The pads of his fingers are electric, tracing eyebrows, nose, lips, throat. Only there can he feel something truly old, something beyond repair, and in its own way, eternal as he is. He caresses his own, sharp collarbone, new and yet familiar, lets his palm graze a firm pectoral. His hand wanders farther, following a soft path of hair from navel and down…  
  
Balem lets out a barely audible sigh of breath as he takes himself in hand. With his free hand, he braces himself against the wall as he strokes along his length. Slow, at first, but the sensation knots in his stomach, urging him on. There is no need to be gentle with a body so newly regenerated. This kind of pleasure has become clockwork. Effortless. Only now, only looking into eyes made incandescent with nectar, did it feel new. A hoarse gasp leaves him, the beginnings of release tautening his core, and he slows. Not yet, not just yet… Balem licks his lip, then bites down. The sharp jag of pain, negligible in the grand scheme of things, is almost unbearable, now. He is Narcissus and Adonis, folded together, all vain avarice and glorying in the raw pleasure that fills him up. The only agony is that even this body, so full of life, cannot contain it. Arousal reverberates inside him, swelling in his lungs, his racing heart.  
  
For a blinding instant, he remembers the sight of his mother surfacing from the nectar, shaking the wreck of a thousand-thousand lives from her hair. Balem grits his teeth as he spills over, his release hot in hand, hollowing him out. He leans against the mirror, which fogs over with his breath. A rare moment of relaxation washes over him, and he lets himself sink into its reverie. A _ping_ stirs him, and he runs his fingertips over the node behind his ear to answer it.  
  
Titus has always been one to barge in. His glittering facsimile steps out of the wall, stops short, stares. Balem locks eyes with him.  
  
“Something I can help you with, brother?” Titus blinks. Keeps staring. There’s a slight twitch in his lips, as if he might speak, but no words come. His form vanishes without a word, but not out of any sense of mortification. Lust is catching, after all… Beyond satisfied, Balem pads into the bathroom just off his quarters. Another bath… Another bath will do nicely.


End file.
